


The Doctor Is In

by Nitrobot



Category: Transformers: Prime
Genre: F/M, I should have done ratchcee a long time ago, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Sticky Sexual Interfacing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-29
Updated: 2016-05-29
Packaged: 2018-06-07 01:10:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6778915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nitrobot/pseuds/Nitrobot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arcee already knew the diagnosis before she even entered the medbay. But maybe she just wanted to see what Ratchet would do with her stuck in heat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Now I don't usually headcanon Cybertronians as having natural heat cycles, but honestly where smut's concerned I will go absolutely nuts for decent pairings just you watch me.

Arcee wiped again at the sheen of coolant trickling down her forehelm, gathering under her crest and dripping over her tight chestplates. “Short words please, Ratch. Just... tell me what the Pit is wrong with me.”

That was what Ratchet was struggling with. He'd seen the signs often enough, centuries ago on Cybertron when the most anyone had to worry about was cleaning their armour seams and getting enough energon in their tanks. And when he had to break the news, the patient was already expecting the answer.

But Arcee… she was young. Her whole life was contained by the strict regulations of warfare. She didn't even take energon outside the prescribed ration slots. The only times she'd ever let herself break the regime, allowed space in her spark for anyone outside her own squadron, they both ended up offline. And now she was going through something that required, _demanded_ that she forget there was even a war to be fighting, blank her mind of nothing but instinct and need for the coming long solar cycles.

Ratchet didn't know what made Primus crueler; forcing it on Arcee so soon after losing Cliffjumper, or forcing him to be the one to break the news. 

“Well, Arcee…” He’d finally run out of ways to keep stalling, but his vocaliser kept seizing up to save him from the inevitable awkwardness. “From your symptoms and these scans… it all points to a heat cycle.”

Though he kept his helm bowed low, he still heard Arcee’s vents hitch. Her fans, already struggling against the unfamiliar demands her coding was putting on her, whirred wildly on their spindles and almost covered up her stilted whisper.

“Are you… are you fragging kidding?” She didn't sound as surprised as he was expecting, as if she already knew what was happening and just hoped she was wrong. That was most likely, after all. She was too smart to not figure it out for herself.

“For your sake, I wish I was,” Ratchet answered, only able to keep his optics on her as long as she kept her helm aimed at the floor. Her digits made clawed grooves in the examination slab, fledgling fists trying to tear through the metal.

“I must have… forgotten to renew my firewalls or something,” she mumbled, lifting a weary hand towards her forehelm and trying to rub away the pounding ache behind the plating. Her winglets all but sagged, like the clipped wings of a defeated Seeker, and each vent was pulled up from the deepest depths of her spark. “Can’t you just put some new ones in place? Or disable the coding?” 

“I'm afraid once a cycle starts, the only thing to stop it is to wait until it ends, or  
… deal with it directly. It's in the very early stages now, but this time tomorrow… you'll be feeling the full effects of it.” She seemed to be expecting that and just nodded with her helm weighing her neck down like a thrumming chunk of lead. It was all she did for at least a klick, so long without speaking that Ratchet worried she was stuck in a feedback loop.

“Arcee…?” As quiet as the prompt was, hearing her name seemed to jolt her enough that her helm swung up, optics clamped shut as her denta rolled on her lip.

“I'm fine. I'll… I'll be okay. Just lock myself in my quarters until it's over. Simple.” She pushed herself off the slab, landing heavy on the floor and almost crumpling under her own weight. Ratchet instantly knelt to prop her up, ignoring the sizzling heat of her damp plates and the mess of her EM field until she managed to shove him away. Even with her own body turning itself into a walking inferno, she wouldn't let anyone help her. But Ratchet had duties to fulfil, ones he'd sworn himself to when Cybertron was still recovering from the Quintessons, and no femme's stubbornness would stop him carrying them out.

“If you wish, I could give you some stasis fluid,” he offered, watching her march towards the door from a safe distance. “It may help you recharge easier.” It only really worked for a select few of bots, those with already sluggish systems like Bulkhead, but even placebos could mean the difference between an easy heat and a catastrophic one. 

Arcee stopped and propped herself against a table, only a few steps from the door. “Thanks... but I can handle it on my own. It's not like anyone ever died from a cycle, after all.” Ratchet held himself back from protesting with several hundred accounts of mechs doing ludicrous things to satisfy themselves, though only because his vocaliser went silent when she flicked her optics up at him. They were always lovely, he’d thought, but now the swirls of pink and cyan were highlighted with fire, an ancient kind of passion leaping out from her sockets as if set on devouring him whole. Whatever was going on in her spark chamber was only poorly reflected by her optics, though the ragged state of her vocaliser gave Ratchet a much better idea of it.

“Though who knows? I might end up right back here with you, Ratch…”

He'd diagnosed heat cycles many times before, seen the effects and consequences from a distance, and now that he was seeing one unfold before him he was left utterly speechless. Coolant welled from his open seams and his armour seemed several sizes too small. His spark went from frozen to hammering against its casing, drawn like a magnet towards the femme setting him on fire with nothing but her optics.

And then Arcee broke the spell with two more words. “I'm kidding.”

When he made himself laugh along it was like breaking his faceplate out of stone. “R-Right, of course.” Arcee might have rolled her optics at him, but he was trying to avoid looking at them again so all he saw was a teasing twitch of her winglets. Instead he found a random datapad to focus on, humming to hide the droning whirr of his cooling fans switched into overdrive. “I will advise Optimus that you'll be… incapable of work for the next few solar cycles.” Over the pulse of energon and coolant in audios, he heard the door hushing as it opened to let Arcee out.

“I appreciate it. See you, Ratch.”

“See you…” He smiled just in case she was looking at him, raised two digits in a small wave before the door rushed closed again, and his frame all but melted against the nearest wall, a hand at his sweating forehelm while the other let the datapad fall and clatter.  
Either the heat was making Arcee mischievous, or he'd just gone far too long without a femme near his codpiece.  
Considering the very strained state of the latter, it was probably a very dangerous mixture of both.


	2. Chapter 2

Ratchet first noticed something was different on his way to the medbay, as his vents filtered through unnaturally warm air and coolant started to dapple his armour. By the time he reached his station his olfactories were drenched in something sweet, heavy with something he didn't recognise until he noticed Arcee seated on the examination table, legs dangling lazily and thighs deliberately spaced apart. Though she noticed him as well, her lidded optics were glazed over with that endless lust, the primal magma bubbling up from her spark to overtake her whole frame. Her plating was sweating, shiny with all sorts of fluids that coated the room with what could only be described as sex made airborne. Ratchet’s restraint was dwindling more every nanoklick as he breathed it in, and he had to chew on his lip as he tried to pull focus away from her panel, half hidden under her rubbing digits.

“Ar...Arcee?” 

“I think your diagnosis was right, Ratchet.” Her vocaliser was wobbling, weighting each word with low moans, and her heaving chestplates struggled to keep up with her vents. 

“I can see that…” It was all Ratchet could say, with his optics locked on her chest as any kind of distraction from the lure between her legs while they swung down and carried her towards him. And, of course, he couldn't make himself back away from her

“I've had cycles before, you know,” she told him, groaning more than speaking and gliding more than walking. “During the war. And I've always had someone to take care of me during them…” Her hands were warm on his hips, warmer still on the guilty hardness of his codpiece, and he considered it a testament to willpower that he managed to pull away from her.

“Arcee, I'm not… I can't. You're not thinking straight. The heat cycle’s making you do things you wouldn't normally do.” He shook his helm so he didn't have to see her confusion, or hurt. Whichever showed stronger in her cracked expression. 

She didn't pounce on him, or claw at his panel regardless like other cycle-frenzy femmes might have done. In fact, Ratchet had thought, almost hoped, that she simply left until he felt her hand again; this time gently grasping his wrist.

“And what if it isn't just the heat?” she asked quietly, running her digits down his hand; a caress too gentle and slow to come from something as basic as lust. He watched her circle a thumb under his palm, felt both of them trembling, yet when he looked up all he could see in her optics was need and desire, and respect glazed over. In that instant he knew rejecting her now would not just drive her wild, send her systems into a frenzy of grief; it would almost break her spark.

“...Are you sure, Arcee?”

“I've been sure for a while now, Ratch…” Still holding his hand, her other servo reached for his neck, sliding behind the thrumming cables to pull his helm down. It had been so long since his last kiss with anyone, let alone a femme like Arcee, that he wasn't quite sure what to do against the soft, warm grasp of her lips, like pressing himself against a spark chamber. But the simple touch, the fact that he didn't pull away, seemed to be enough for her. 

Or maybe it was the fact that his hands seemed to migrate to her aft, utterly out of his notice until he felt her thighs clenching under his palms. And if her teasing grin against his mouth didn't manage to finally convince him, the strain of his codpiece decided for him anyway.

“In that case…” His vocaliser felt raw, flayed open so all sound grated against the sparking wires and made each word a growl. “Get back on the table.”

And with his vents hot on her face, digits thick in the seams of her hips, she was only too happy to obey. She simply retraced her light steps, letting his hands slide off her body as she moved out of them. With Ratchet following her this time, leashed by her hips and thighs and the smirk that refused to twitch into anything less sinful, she'd barely reseated herself before he was shoving her back; winglets tucked, spinal strut parallel with the table and arching up to him. He didn't need to pin her there, but he had to keep his hands planted on either side of her to stop them wandering again.

“If we’re going to do this, Arcee… we do it my way.”

She was panting, biting at the edge of her smirk as she raised an eyeridge at him. “And what does that mean?” 

“It means you don't tell anyone, and you do everything I say. Understand?” 

It took a few nanoklicks for the command to sink in, but when it did she was nodding.

“Good girl.”

Then he noticed he was already holding her thighs with her own hands encouraging, caressing the smooth slick planes of protoform; and now he looped them close around his hips with the intense, intoxicating heat from between them spilling against his codpiece. “Comfortable?” Again she nodded, but every movement she made was sluggish compared to the eager jolt of her hips against him, as if she was melting against him. If that was the case, she was still holding up better than he was.

“Good.” He was leaning over her now, sinking against her supple frame that had no place so close to his clunky plating, grinding into him and the pressure swelling in waves between his legs. “Because you're going to be stuck like this for the next few breems.”

Arcee grinned up at him, a Sharkticon’s smile he couldn't stop from smothering with his dry mouth. Moans trickled around their lips, and her glossa slipped through every small gap between them, seeking out his own and wrapping around it. Ratchet was gone the second his lips touched hers, collapsing under the weight of leaden arousal hardening his protoform and encasing his fizzling spark, their EM fields casting a surprisingly calm aura around the frenzy of their bodies. Arcee only pulled back from his burning codpiece when she felt his digits, thick but precise, against her panel, prising open the thin folds with blue lube instantly rushing over his fingers before they'd even met her valve. 

“You are eager, aren’t you?” Ratchet felt her giggle fill his mouth and her pinned winglets flutter, squashing her even firmer against him, and only she could have made him laugh back when all else he could think about was fragging her and leaving dents and blue paint skids forever on the table. He eased one digit in as her soaked nodes tightened alround him, hot gasps echoing against his chin as Arcee spasmed, and she was still begging for more with two rubbing inside her.

Fortunate, then, that his other hand finished wrenching his codpiece out of the way. Thick blue ribs throbbed transfluid across the orange-dappled grey shaft, the swollen bulb already dripping against her thigh with droplets quivering from the heat of her valve. Ratchet would have just shoved it in if he wasn't basking in the supernovas of her optics, the mad grin breaking under her denta, the undeniable skip of her spark as she saw his spike, in all its stubby and discoloured glory, and fell in love with it instantly. His erection almost died down as he thought of how she wouldn't even be here if it wasn't for the cycle, no matter what she'd fooled herself into thinking about an old mech like him; but the truth lay right there in her spark hammering between her chestplates, an electric bass like the pounding lap of boiling energon around their processors. Nothing would have brought her here if she didn't truly want to be with him, not even forces of nature and Primus themselves. 

And knowing that, Ratchet went right back to being smug about it.

“Now I need you to be as quiet as possible, Arcee... okay?” He resisted the overwhelming urge to thrust forwards just to hear her whine against his thumb hovering on her lips, the rest of his digits framing her face and his spike nestled so teasingly between her thighs. 

“What if I can't stay quiet?” she asked, breathing hard against his thumb as it slipped between her denta, pressing down on her glossa as his forehelm touched hers.

“Then I’ll have to gag you,” he told her, a split second warning before he was inside her; bright juices and hundreds of firing nodes and her choked moans all closing around him like a delicious vice. Deep, powerful thrusts took him to the hidden sensors that clenched and massaged his aching head as it pulsed with decades of unreleased tension, filling her desperate channels with all he had to offer, drowning her with pleasure that was only a shadow to his own.

But Arcee... thighs splayed, back snapped up, helm lolled with everything else inside her screaming for him, his spike and tongue and the tight embrace he kept her in as he thrusted, and though she tried to swallow her moans they were too colossal to hide under either of their glossas. She had a grin plastered on despite it, gasps rolling out like her vocaliser was on its last legs, and he saw orgasms painted thick on her face before he felt them tremor along her legs and greedy folds. Her fingers gave up on her valve rim as soon as he stretched it wide, the ridges of his spike rubbing the anterior nodes with every thrust in and out, and instead they used his hips as handles to make sure he never pulled out. And he had no intentions to, not even when he felt the unfamiliar build of a long, long overdue overload after… however long he'd spent watching pleasure and joy and pure delight fill her spark and every facet of her beautiful being, where time just didn't matter to him. 

But when the overload came, it almost knocked him into stasis. The climax was so intense, the release of pressure and transfluid and everything he'd kept well hidden behind professionalism and sourness overwhelmed him to the point that he couldn't even feel his spark. He might have yelled, but he couldn't hear it. His digits cracked, his EM field threw into a riot, and his optics stung like needles filled them right before a flash of black did. It cleared in a nanoklick that might have lasted a breem, but Arcee was still there underneath him; zoned out in her own way with coolant pooling around her, glossa listlessly dangling and optics struggling to stay open. But the glowing slits were looking up at him, and she was smiling.

At some point his vocaliser started working, and he only realised he said something when a bubble of exhausted laughter floated up Arcee’s throat. And of course what he said was the only thing sticking out in his blank processor; “Primus, you're gorgeous.” Seeing her laugh so easily only cemented it in his mind, and he would have stayed there glued to her just for a chance to see it again. 

But reality was stabbing its way back into Ratchet’s senses, and he had no choice but to see what a huge mess they'd made. Lube coated his plating in a thick, sticky gloss, but most of the fluid was pale orange spilling from her valve, his numb spike still buried into it, and all over the edge of the ruined table. All transfluid, all from him. He wasn't sure if he should have been proud of it or not, but at least Arcee seemed happy with it. He wasn't sure if he ever saw her more happy than right then, sprawled under him and ruined by more overloads than some beings would have in their whole lives. He could at least be proud of that, the entire heat cycle taken care of with one good frag. 

Ratchet sighed against her, already so used to the smooth curve of her legs bringing him closer and the soft steel of her lips barely holding back her moans and pleads, that he was regretting having to leave it all. But most of the mess was his, so he had to clean it up. He forced himself up on weary servos, hovering over her, and slowly pulled his hips back to exit her. Still dazed, optics only fluttering, she whimpered with each dulled ridge slipping out of her and cried out when there was nothing left inside. 

“Are you okay?” he asked, smoothing a hand over her damp forehelm with the rest of her frame still drenched in coolant. A shaky sigh met his lips as she nodded, still blind and fighting off fatigue that was catching up with Ratchet himself. 

He could barely stand when he left the table, having to lean against a lamp stand with one hand trying to shove his spike back behind the safety of his codpiece even as it tingled and protested even the slightest graze of his digit. Just as well Arcee wasn't watching, or she'd laugh and he'd want to frag her all over again. 

But once was more than enough for Ratchet, at least for now. With his codpiece somehow buckled again, digits wet with shared fluids and his optics still refusing to believe that they'd never before noticed how beautiful Arcee could be, he made himself croak, “I'll let you get cleaned up,” before tearing himself and his pining spark away from her towards the cleaning supplies. 

And when he turned back to the empty table, processor forced full of menial duties with Arcee still lingering beneath them, the door was already closing behind her.


End file.
